


Welcome Home

by HomebodyNobody



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, canonverse, fixit, jyndor, jynssian, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9083383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomebodyNobody/pseuds/HomebodyNobody
Summary: Cassian wakes up after Scarif, and the only thing that matters is that Jyn did, too.





	

**Author's Note:**

> my first rebelcaptain fic... be kind

The last thing Cassian remembers is light. Bright, blinding. Almost painful, but not quite. The air intense and warm, Jyn’s arms tight around him, her face buried in his neck. He’d closed his eyes against the glare, pressed his lips against her forehead, tried not to think about his sisters, his mother, all the friends they watched fall. 

He held Jyn as tightly as could, and the last thought he recalled was of her.  _ I could have loved you.  _ He could feel her breath stir the hairs above his ear, and then suddenly, he wasn’t feeling anything anymore.  _  I could have loved you, given time.  _

***********

The next thought is pain.

Every single inch of him is on fire, his body resisting air, aid, existence itself. He can hear a manic beeping, people shouting, boots on stone floors, and a desperate voice screaming for mercy. As the wild, spinning lights fade, he thinks it might be his own. 

The next time his consciousness resurfaces, it’s much less violent. Someone -- a medic, a droid, he doesn’t remember -- covered him in a cooling serum, and there’s a dull throb in his elbow that tells him an IV is pumping something to rehydrate him into his veins. His eyes are reluctant to open, and take more than a moment to refocus on the scene around him. They’ve got him in a private room in the medbay -- which makes sense, given the seriousness of his injuries -- but that thought barely registers before he realizes that his arms are empty, and Jyn is nowhere to be found. 

His heart monitor speeds to a dangerous tempo as he scrambles for the call button in the side of his bunk, and he struggles to free himself from the tangle of the sheets, his body just strong enough to pull him up to sitting. A flood of nurses follows the urgent call of the of the EKG, and they put hands on his shoulders, his chest, pushing him back down to the mattress. Their voices are a jumble of warnings and scoldings, talking about instability of his vitals and the injuries, internal and external. 

Cassian ignores it all, attempting to push his way past the wall of orderlies holding him down. He can hear himself shouting her name, but she isn’t answering. She isn’t anywhere, isn’t in the crowd of onlookers at the door, isn’t in the visitor’s chair in the corner, isn’t in his arms, tucked tight against him, where she last was. He can’t feel the pain coursing through his bones, can’t feel the doctors tugging at his arms or see the penlights in his eyes. All he wants is to know where she is, if she’s healthy if she’s… if she’s even alive. 

He hasn’t felt this desperate in a long time.

Finally, he grabs a young medic by the front of his uniform and pulls him down to eye level. “Jyn Erso.” He croaks, his voice like boulders scraping together, the sides of his throat sticking together with each gasp. “Where is she?” 

The boy’s eyes widen at the power of Cassian’s grip, and he hurries to answer, tripping over his syllables. He’s barely more than a child, called to fight after the grievous losses at Scarif. For an instant, Cassian sees himself in the medic’s eyes. Young, scared, but resolved, to take down a regime that had taken too much from him. “Alive!” the boy answers, and takes his hands off Cassian, holding them open in the air. “She’s alive!” 

A breath of relief relaxes his chest, and suddenly he can feel the bandages, rough against his skin, feel the bones hanging awkward where they shouldn’t be, feel every broken vein blooming purple and black and blue over his skin. The next words sputter in his throat, and color returns to his knuckles as he relinquishes his grip on the medic’s shirt. “Take me --” he coughs, ugly and violent, spurring another wave of fussing from the crowd of attendants. “Take me to her.” 

“I can’t, captain, I’m sorry,” the medic is rushing, apologies spilling from his lips like water from a ledge, like blood from a wound. Cassian is so tired of unnecessary words, tired of unnecessary blood, just so, so tired. “She’s in a separate room, you both need to rest, I can’t -- I can’t let you leave sir, I’m sorry --” The words keep coming, but then there’s a needle in Cassian’s spine, and he’s not listening anymore. 

***********

He doesn’t know how he can tell, but when he wakes again he knows days have passed. The bandages around his ribs are fresh, and his body aches less, his skin once again feeling whole and temperate, rather than torn and burning. He lifts his shirt to see the bruises have faded yellow-green instead of violent black and blue. 

“You’re coming out of a medically induced coma,” says a voice, and Cassian turns to see the same medic from before standing next to his bed. “Disorientation is normal, so is slight amnesia. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but --” The medic looks up from his chart and smiles sadly at Cassian, shrugging apologetically. “It was the only way we could get you to stay still.” 

He doesn’t have a justification for that. In the instances after the battle, Jyn was the most important thing. If it was anyone else -- one of his own men, even though his throat tightens at the thought -- he would have done the same. “Who are you?” he asks. 

“Dav Chias,” the medic answers. And then, hurriedly, “Uh, sir.” He’s young and broad, his hands too rough to have been medical personnel for long. They’re a workman’s hands -- a soldier’s hands. This boy is young, impressionable. A boy Cassian can use, if he’s careful. 

“You look more like a soldier than a medic, Dav Chias,” Cassian says, and the boy’s face screws up as he looks down at his shoes. Every beat of Cassian’s battered heart echoes Jyn’s name, every second that passes without news of her is a moment too long, but he knows he has to be careful with this boy, that if he pushes too fast he’ll end up with another tranquilizer in his veins, and no closer to her than he started. 

“My father wanted me away from the action,” Dav grumbles, slamming Cassian’s chart back into it’s place on the wall. “He’s a flight leader, and he’s keeping me grounded.” He refuses to look Cassian in the eye as he fiddles with his IV bag, checks the bandages on his side, examines the burns on his knuckles. 

“I could do something about that,”  he says, the desperate words out of his mouth before he can stop them. It’s only half a lie. He’s a Captain, and now, he supposes, a hero. Mon Mothma might listen to him, if she’s not horrendously angry about the fact that he stole a confiscated freighter, took an imperial defector and a troublesome ‘consultant’ halfway across the system, and involve the rebellion in a battle they never meant to fight. But he did assist in transmitting the Death Star plans. So. There’s that. 

Dav stops immediately, his hands freezing where they were checking Cassian’s pulse. “You think…” he starts, wonder in his young eyes. Cassian can almost see the visions of glory dancing in his mind’s eye. “You think you really could?” 

“I’m a Captain,” Cassian says offhandedly, making a half-hearted attempt at his charming smile. “That has to mean something.” Dav looks elated, although he tries to hide it, and Cassian knows it’s time to make his request. “Of course, you would have to help me in return.” 

Dav caves immediately. “Yes, of course, sir! Uh, Captain! Of course! Anything you need!” He drops Cassian’s wrist, gives an admirable attempt at a salute, and then flutters for a moment, like Cassian is going to ask him to fly, right then and there. 

He looks the boy in the eye, does his best to look Captain-esque and important, even with sunken eyes and a thin hospital pyjamas. “Take me to Jyn.” 

****** 

Dav frets as he pushes Cassian down the deserted hallways in the wheelchair. Cassian ignores him, choosing to focus on the movement of air against his skin, the smell of soil and fresh rain heavy in the air -- the smell of life. He tries to breathe slowly, keep his heart rate down as not to alert the EKG, and Dav, by extension, but it’s difficult. Excitement and apprehension mix with leftover adrenaline, and it’s all he can do not to let his heart pump out of his chest. 

She’s alive, she’s alive  _ she’s alive _ … 

Chirrut, Baze, Kaytoo, Bodhi… His chest aches even more with the thought of his fallen crewmates. He’d given them up for dead just like he’d given up on himself. He has so many new ghosts to follow him through life, but Jyn… Jyn isn’t one of them. 

Finally,  _ finally _ , Dav turns a corner into one of the rooms, and Cassian sees her. She’s whole, thank the stars, and sitting up on the bed, her arm in a blood pressure cuff. Her temples and forehead are mottled with bruises, there are healing cuts on her nose and her chin, but her green eyes still burn from beneath a dark fringe, her brown hair loose and wavy around her neck. 

She’s glaring at the droid taking her vitals, picking at her fingernails with her free hand, biting at her lip. Cassian can see fresh blood welling in her cuticles, and his heart aches. Every fiber of him burns to be closer to her, but he still hasn’t said anything, too relieved to see her alive to do much else. 

Dav’s hand appears in his field of vision, and Cassian looks up to see him smiling benevolently down at him. Cassian takes it, uses Dav’s strength to stand. The slate floor is cold beneath his feet, and his knees are shaking, but he’s standing on his own, defying death another day. 

The motion catches Jyn’s attention, and she turns to look, her mouth already opening for questions, retorts, a million words planned that disappear the instant she sees his face. Her eyes run over his battered form, cataloguing every injury, every detail that is different since she saw him last. He knows his eyes are sunken, that his lips are dry and cracked. She wears the same marks of fatigue, but neither seem to care. 

“Cassian…” the word is but a whisper leaving her lips, a hesitant question she’s desperate for the answer for. 

“Jyn.” Her name is an answer. Her name is  _ We’re alive _ and  _ We did it  _ and  _ I’m sorry.  _ Her name is  _ I’m here.  _

“Cassian!” She shoves the droid aside and stumbles to her feet, sending both of their attendants into a flurry. But he doesn’t care,  _ he doesn’t care _ , because his arms are suddenly, wonderfully, full of Jyn. Her hair in his face, her face against his neck, and her arms tight, so tight around him. His choked-up sobs disappearing into her shoulder and her laughing whispers into his skin. 

_ We’re alive. We did it. You’re here.  _

Their world is just the two of them, solid and real and alive after what they felt was certain death. Their world is the lingering smell of oil and sand, the warmth of being pressed together, the cool relief of seeing the other breathing again.

_ We’re alive. We did it. I’m here _ . 

He’s whispering the words into her temple, and she’s repeating them back against the hollow of his throat and nothing,  _ nothing _ , can break them apart. 

They are one with the force, and the force has made them one. 

_ We’re alive. We did it. We’re here. _

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for staying, guys! kudos are high-fives, comments are hugs, reviews make me eternally grateful and reassure me I'm putting valuable time into this hobby. I also write for a few other fandoms (pls check those out) and you can come cry with me abt rogue one @smolmontygreen on tumblr


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